Oz Thumbs Down: Officiating
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Last October, the Australian Sports Commission issued a public statement offering "Applications. . . for 2012 National Officiating Scholarships." The benefits were to include "frequent practical officiating. . .under the guidance of an experienced mentor," as well as "exposure to high-level officiating and related debriefings," and "attendance at seminars and conferences."
While it's nice (or a little creepy) to know that the Australian government is deeply vested in the critical field of sports officiating, and has brought all of its bureaucratic tools to bear on the effort (if anyone has any idea what "development pathways and initiatives developed and implemented by participating NSOs" means, please write!), it's also pretty clear that few, if any, of the linespersons at the Australian Open had availed themselves of those plum scholarships.
Or if they did, they may have spent less time practicing line calls than hobnobbing at seminars and "debriefings" (Why do I have a funny feeling that that's code for: Everyone meet in the hotel bar at six, woo-hoo!).
The officiating at the Australian Open was just awful.
Usually, officiating is one of those subjects wise pundits and commentators just leave alone. Nobody, but nobody, wants a tennis match to be about officiating, and certainly not errors or controversies. But at times it seemed like this entire tournament was about just that. One enduring image from the men's final is either player, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic, casting imploring looks at chair umpire Pascal Maria, hoping for some sort of comfort.
To his credit, Maria appeared to understand that this can be a slippery slope; a chair umpire who feels obliged to vigorously assert his overrule privileges is just asking for trouble that can come in many forms, from accusations of favoritism toward one player to overplaying his hand and blowing a few calls.
Besides, that's ultimately why the Hawkeye electronic line-calling system is there—as a court of last resort. Do we really want to see a linesman overruled by the umpire, then witness Hawkeye overruling the overrule? That's just what happened in the John Isner v. David Nalbandian match—almost.
Kader Nouni, the chair umpire in that one, refused Nalbandian's request to have an overrule reviewed (it certainly looked like a bad overrule by the chair umpire in replay), because he didn't issue the challenge soon enough. It may have cost Nalbandian the match.
But the officiating was error-strewn throughout the tournament, on occasions large and small, and you have to wonder why. My own feeling is that we may be feeling an unintended consequence of the shift to electronic line-calling by way of Hawkeye. I'm a fan of the system, but the little computerized overseer has taken us on a crazy, often counter-intuitive joyride.
One of the first, surprising dividends of Hawkeye was the way it empowered the chair umpire, instead of greatly reducing his importance. If a chair umpire is less inclined to jump in and overrule because of the existence of Hawkeye, he's also become a much more active if informal mediator on court.
The first reaction of a player who thinks he got hooked now is often to look to the. . . chair umpire. He or she wants to know how the chair ump saw it, and even if there's no overrule (it's too late by then anyway), the player will read the umpire's reactions as either a signal to challenge or let the call go. In that sense, Hawkeye has brought the umpire further into the match in an unprecedented way.
But could it also be that Hawkeye is making line callers, well, lazy? A sleepy Aussie who missed the seminars could very easily decide it wouldn't hurt anything if he just relaxed a bit in his chair at two- sets-all. No worries, mate, we have an umpire there to overrule in the event I miss something, and then there's also the big boss, good old Hawkeye!
Because of the utter lack of confidence in the officials, aided perhaps by the chair umpires' reluctance to become too involved, in the late stages of the tournament we came face to face a few times with the nightmare Hawkeye scenario—a player, having expended all his challenges in a fit of justifiable paranoia of poor calls, losing a huge match because he was unable to challenge an obviously erroneous call.
If nothing else, the lords of tennis ought to read linespersons the riot act, and review the job description with chair umpires—not all of whom are as capable as Maria. Down in Oz, though, perhaps they should let the conferences wait and start with mandatory eye examinations for all.